By Allan Fox: Welterweight contender Marcos Maidana (32-3, 29 KO’s) will be taking part in a stay busy fight against 21-year-old Angel Martinez (13-3-1, 9 KO’s) on December 12th for the vacant WBA Inter-Continental welterweight title at the Estadio Luna Park, Buenos Aires, Distrito Federal, Argentina.

Maidana, 29, wants a title shot against the likes of WBC interim welterweight champion Robert Guerrero and WBA champion Paulie Malignaggi. However, those fighters aren’t looking to fight a slugger like Maidana, so this puts Maidana in the position to where he’s got to look for anyone to stay busy against.

Martinez has lost three out of his last four fights with one of them being a draw. Martinez was stopped in the 8th round by Jimrex Jaca in his last fight in August, and before that Martinez was taken out by Lucas Matthysse in the 6th round in February of this year.

Maidana is coming off of a difficult 8th round knockout win over junior middleweight Jesus Soto Karass last September in a fight where Maidana took a lot of punishment before turning up the heat on Soto-Karass and getting the stoppage. Maidana looked kind of shaky for awhile in that fight before he started unloading with big bombs in the 7th to take control and then halt Soto-Karass in the next round.

In Maidana’s fight before that against Devon Alexander, Maidana was easily beaten by a 10 round decision in February. Alexander was much faster than Maidana, and beat him to the punch all night long. However, what really gave Alexander the fight was his clinching. He clinched Maidana over 10 times per rounds, which stopped Maidana from throwing anything.

The referee working the fight failed to take points off from Alexander for the excessive clinching, and so Maidana was pretty much helpless to do much. It would have been interesting to see how Maidana would have done had there not been all the clinching. He still likely would have lost the fight, but it would have been a more competitive fight.